Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harrington of Watford (Con)]

I thank my noble friend Lady Wyld—my noble friend both personally and professionally—for her comments. On the authorities that are being involved in this, as I have explained before, it is a wraparound service and it will be done in different ways. For example, we are organising welcome centres, so that when people arrive at the airports and, for example, Victoria Coach Station, there are those who can help with the first stage of the services that she mentioned, so it is not forgotten. I hope it will be part of an integrated process. Obviously, it needs the involvement of all the different organisations. This is not central government saying, “This is what we are doing, and we are controlling it centrally.” We cannot; this is happening on an unprecedented scale. We have a lot to learn and there will be problems. I am not claiming that it is all perfect, but we are getting there. I found that comment extremely helpful and I will bear it in mind for everything we do.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I join others in welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Harrington, to his post. He comes with a very high reputation for the way in which he dealt with the Syrian refugee programme. I know that everyone in the House, from all sides, welcomes him to his new responsibilities.

I will ask him two things. The first builds on something that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, asked about. He may have seen comments by Theresa May over the past few days and by the Local Government Association this morning about the dangers that young people, children and unaccompanied minors could face from people trying to traffic them or exploit them. I declare an interest as a trustee of a charity which works in that field.

Secondly, I want to ask him about sponsorship for programmes not in this country but in countries such as Moldova. Moldova has a population of 2.4 million and in just over two weeks it has already taken 300,000 Ukrainians—the equivalent of 2.4 million in the United Kingdom if they came here. Some 200,000 have gone to Romania and, of course, millions have now gone to Poland. Last week his noble friend Lady Williams was good enough to have a short discussion about the ways in which we can help charities based in the UK but which do not receive match funding; they are not covered by the DEC programme. Will he have a conversation with her about how sponsorship can work, so that people do not have to travel too far away from the region if they want to stay in those neighbouring countries, and can they be enabled to do so?

[Lord Harrington of Watford (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, characteristically makes very good comments on this issue. On his point about sponsorship overseas, I must confess that I had not thought of that. All our overseas efforts have been put into providing money and resources, and we can be quite proud of what we have done. I know life is not down to money; this is about human misery. Last weekend, when I looked at the numbers, we were, I think, the largest single country in that regard. That does not answer his question, but it does mean that we have resources on the ground to help with that sort of thing. But I will consider the point he makes because it is very valid.

On the fear of the child exploiters, people traffickers and general predators that appear in these situations, as they do in every situation, we are relying a lot here on the local authorities. We are relying on electronic methods initially but on the local authorities and all the services—medical services, schools and so on—to provide the eyes and ears we need. But I am worried about it.